


Yet Hope Remains

by inexplicifics



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Horses, Sacking of Kaer Morhen (The Witcher)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:29:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28052463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inexplicifics/pseuds/inexplicifics
Summary: There is a valley in the Blue Mountains, not so far from Kaer Morhen, which holds lush meadows well-suited for small herds of horses.
Comments: 32
Kudos: 364
Collections: The Witcher Flash Fic Challenge #012





	Yet Hope Remains

The last remnants of the Order of the Witchers come to Kaer Morhen, high in the Blue Mountains of Kaedwen, when their Order has splintered and scattered and Morgraig has become more a prison than a sanctuary. They bring with them weapons and armor, foodstuffs and bolts of cloth, all the myriad supplies needed to make the ancient keep a home once more. And they bring horses.

The horses they bring are strong and smart and sturdy, but no more so than any common knight’s destrier or well-bred lady’s palfrey. The Order of Witchers bought good horses, and kept them well, and paid little attention to them beyond that.

The new Wolf School, though, has far less coin than the Order of Witchers did. Just _buying_ horses is an expense their brothers do not need and cannot sustain. But they _do_ have a few brothers who were injured enough in the schisms that they will not be going out upon the Path save in direst need...and there is a valley in the Blue Mountains, not so far from Kaer Morhen, which holds lush meadows well-suited for small herds of horses.

So the witchers of Kaer Morhen take up horse-breeding.

There are debates, because of course there are, about what traits are most desirable in a witcher’s horse. Some brothers hold out for strength, others for stamina, still others for intelligence. One small but vocal group hold out for years, arguing that they should attempt to breed some hint of Chaos into their mounts, to make them supernaturally clever; they are forced to concede that this would probably be a bad idea the year after Kaer Morhen acquires a small herd of goats, and learns exactly what sort of chaos a truly clever ungulate can create.

It takes years, but witchers have years to spend, and finally, the witchers have bred a herd of perfect witchers’ horses: strong enough to carry a man in full armor and his gear, with the stamina to travel for months on the Path without flagging, and the capacity to survive on the sort of diet that would sustain a goat, so the witchers don’t have to fret as much over buying grain on the Path. Long-lived, and only rarely prone to illness, with some of the same swift healing the witchers have. As smart as herding dogs are, so they both _can_ be trained to perform a startling array of tasks, and are eager for the training. As _loyal_ as dogs, too, so that they will always return to their master’s side. And despite the pleading of several generations of trainees, they are _not_ golden-coated and beautiful as dreams. Horses are common enough targets of theft as it is; they don’t need their horses to be even more appealing than usual. So Morhen horses don’t _look_ like anything special, really.

Each trainee is given a foal when he has passed the Trial of the Grasses and it is judged likely that he will survive long enough to become a witcher. He helps to train the foal, learns its quirks and preferences even as it learns his, and by the time he is ready to go out on the Path, his horse is ready, too. And if the witcher dies, those first few years when so many _do_ , the horse will make its way back to Kaer Morhen, drawn home by some instinct the witchers did not mean to add, but cannot regret. When a horse comes home alone, they know the rider has fallen - they know a brother has died.

*

Vesemir wakes beneath the bodies of his students, and for a while, all he knows is grief. He is lost in the haze of it, in the utter horror of what the sanctuary of Kaer Morhen has become; he moves through what must be done like an automaton, a mage’s homunculus, without letting himself _think_ , because if he lets himself think, lets himself see what he is doing, his heart will finish breaking and he will fling himself from the highest remaining tower and join his students in the realms of death.

He bears the bodies out to the dry moat, and lays them there to rest. He scrubs the soot-stains and the blood-stains from the kitchen and the entrance hall. He clears away the burnt remnants of the goat-pen and the chicken coops, and wonders how people who could burn harmless animals to ash can dare to call _witchers_ the monsters.

He doesn’t even think of the horses.

He had a horse, when he was a young man out on the Path: faithful Copper, plain and true as his name, who walked the Path with him for five decades, and sired half a dozen foals, and died of grand old age well after Vesemir became a trainer and left the Path for good. But Vesemir trains boys, not horses; he was not one of those who spent their spare time poring over ledgers and charts of genealogy, musing over how best to keep the bloodlines strong. And he is far too lost in grief to think of anything more than the next body, the next bloodstain, the next heartbeat, the next breath.

It’s not until Geralt returns, first of the brothers to come in from the Path, leading his Roach behind him, that Vesemir remembers the herds.

It’s nearly winter; the frost is on the fields. Vesemir almost doesn’t dare head for the valley where the herds live - almost cannot bear to discover if the maddened mob came here, too, and destroyed even this. He’s not sure he can survive even one more blow.

There are no horses visible as they reach the mouth of the valley; the white-headed grass blows tall and wild as far as the eye can see. Vesemir and Geralt glance at each other and forge onward into the valley, stretching their senses as far as they will go.

They’re almost to the center of the valley, where a hill crowned with two trees rises as a landmark, when there’s a soft whinny, and they stop and wait, scanning the waving grasses hopefully.

A mare steps out of the tall grass, with a foal beside her, and Vesemir falls to his knees in relief so strong it’s nearly agony. Behind the mare comes another horse, and another, and another, until the herds of Kaer Morhen surround them, whickering softly in greeting.

Geralt steps forward and wraps his arms around the first mare’s neck, and Vesemir smells the bitter tears the younger witcher sheds and does not blame him for them. He’s weeping himself. The herds are here, are safe, are alive and well - this one thing, at least, has been spared the flames.

The foal comes mincing over to him, snorting curiosity, and nuzzles at his hair. Vesemir reaches up to stroke its velvet-soft nose, blinking through salt-sharp tears.

This yet remains. Not everything has burned.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Witcher Flash Fic challenge #12.


End file.
